Desolation Island. Patrick O’Brian

as she hurried from the room, ‘you must show Stephen the plans of the orangery. Stephen knows all about oranges.’

      ‘So I shall,’ said Jack. ‘But first, Stephen – a little more coffee? There is plenty in the pot – first let me tell you about an even more interesting plan. Turn your mind to the wood where the honey-buzzards are nesting.’

      ‘Yes, yes. The honey-buzzards,’ cried Stephen, brightening at once. ‘I have brought a jointed booth for them.’

      ‘What do they want with a jointed booth? They have a perfectly respectable nest.’

      ‘It is a portable booth. I mean to set it up at the edge of the wood, and advance it by degrees to the rise that dominates their tree. There I shall sit at my ease, unseen, protected from the vicissitudes of the weather, watching the progress of their domestic economy. It is supplied with flaps, and every convenience for making observations.’

      ‘Well, I showed you the Roman mine-shafts, I remember – miles of ’em, and mortal dangerous – but do you know what the Romans mined there?’

      ‘Lead.’

      ‘And do you know what all those lumpy hills are? One of them is the very place where you mean to set up your booth.’

      ‘Dross.’

      ‘Will, Stephen,’ said Jack, leaning forward with a very knowing look indeed, ‘now I shall tell you something you do not know, for once. That dross is full of lead; and what is more, that lead contains silver. The Romans’ way of smelting did not extract it all, no, not by a chalk as long as your arm, and there it lies, thousands and thousands of tons of valuable dross just waiting to be treated by Kimber’s new process.’

      ‘Kimber’s new process?’

      ‘Yes. I dare say you have heard of him – a very brilliant fellow. He proceeds by lixiviation with some particular chemicals and then by cupellation according to principles discovered by himself. The lead pays for the working, and the silver is pure profit. The scheme would answer even if there were only one part of lead in one hundred and thirty-seven of dross, and one part of silver in over ten thousand; and on the average of close on a hundred random samples, our dross contains more than seventeen times as much!’

      ‘I am amazed. I did not know the Romans ever mined silver in Britain.’

      ‘Nor did I. But here’s the proof.’ He unlocked the door of a cupboard under the window-seat and came staggering back with a pig of lead upon which there lay a little silver ingot, four inches long. ‘That was the result of no more than a first rough trial,’ he said. ‘No more than a few cart-loads of dross. Kimber set up a little furnace in the old linhay, and I saw the stuff pour out with my own eyes. I wish you had been there.’

      ‘So do I,’ said Stephen.

      ‘Of course, it will call for quite a considerable capital outlay – roads, buildings, proper furnaces and so on – and I had thought of using the girls’ portions; but it seems that they can’t be touched by reason of the trust – that they have to remain in Consols and Navy five per cents, although I proved that it was mathematically impossible for them to yield a seventh part as much, even going by the poorest sample. I do not mean to set it going full-blast until I am likely to be on shore for some years on end –’

      ‘You foresee this eventuality?’

      ‘Oh yes. Unless I am knocked on the head, or unless I am caught doing something very wicked, I should get my flag in the next five years or so – sooner, if those old fellows at the head of the list did not cling to life so – and since it is harder for an admiral to find employment than a captain, I shall have plenty of time to build up my stud and work my mine. But I do mean to make a start, in a modest way, just to get things running and to lay by a fair amount of treasure. Fortunately Kimber is very moderate in his demands: he leases me the use of his patent, and he will supervise the working of the stuff.’

      ‘For a salary?’

      ‘Yes, and a quarter share. A really modest salary, which I think particularly handsome of him, because there is a Prince Kaunitz begging and praying him to attend to his mines in Transylvania, proposing ten guineas a day and a third share; he showed me all sorts of letters from great men in Germany and Austria. But do not run away with the idea that he is one of your enthusiastic vapouring projectors, promising Peru tomorrow: no, no, he is a very honest fellow, scrupulous to a fault, and he gave me fair warning – we may have to operate at a loss for as much as a year. I quite see that, but I can’t wait to begin.’

      ‘Surely you do not mean that you will disturb my buzzards, Jack?’

      ‘Never you fear for them. There’s a long way to go yet: Kimber still needs time and money to make his patents watertight, and for certain experiments; they will have hatched and flown before we have even lit our furnaces, I dare say. And what is more, Stephen, what is more, you will be well on your way to wealth; because although Kimber is unwilling to admit many venturers, I made him promise to let you in on the ground floor, as he puts it.’

      ‘Alas, Jack. What I have is all bespoke, locked up in Spain. Indeed, I am so short in England that it is my intention to beg you to lend me, let us see –’ consulting a paper, ‘seven hundred and eighty pounds.’

      ‘Thank you,’ he said, when Jack came back with a draft on his banker. ‘I am obliged to you, Jack.’

      ‘I beg you will not speak nor think of obligation,’ said Jack. ‘Between you and me, it would be precious strange to speak of obligation. By the way, that is drawn on London, but for these coming days, there is plenty of gold in the house.’

      ‘No, no, my dear: this is for a particular purpose. For myself, I am as comfortable as my best friend could wish.’

      His best friend gazed at him doubtfully: Stephen did not look comfortable in his mind, and he seemed ill at ease in his body too, weary, sad, constrained.

      ‘What do you say to a ride?’ he said. ‘I am half engaged to meet some men at Craddock’s: they promised me my revenge.’

      ‘With all my heart,’ said Stephen, but with so melancholy an attempt at heartiness that Jack could not refrain from saying, ‘Stephen, if anything is amiss, and if I can be of any kind of use, you know…’

      ‘No, no, Jack: you are very good, however. I am a little low in my spirits, to be sure; but I am ashamed that it should be so apparent. I lost a patient in London, and I am by no means sure that I did not lose him through my own fault. My conscience troubles me: and I grieve for him extremely, a young man full of promise. And then again, in London I met Diana Villiers.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Jack awkwardly. ‘Just so.’ And after a pause in which the horses were led to the door and in which Stephen Maturin reflected upon a third factor of his distress – the hare-brained leaving of a folder containing highly confidential papers in a hackney-coach – Jack added, ‘You said Villiers, not Johnson?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Stephen, mounting. ‘It seems that the gentle man already had a wife in America, and that the decree of nullity or whatever they have in those parts was not to be obtained.’

      Diana Villiers was an uncomfortable subject between the two, and after they had ridden for some way, Jack, to change the current of his mind, remarked, ‘You would not think there was any skill in a game like Van John, would you? No. Yet these fellows strip me bare almost every time we sit down together. You used to do the same at picquet, but that is another pair of drawers.’

      Stephen made no reply: he pushed his horse on faster and faster over the bare down, sitting forward with a set, urgent expression on his face, as though he were making an escape; and so they cantered and galloped over the firm turf until they came to the brow of Portsdown Hill, where Stephen reined in for the steep descent. They stood for a while, surrounded by the smell of hot horse and leather, looking down at the vast sweep of the harbour, Spithead, the Island, and the Channel beyond: men-of-war at their moorings, men-of-war moving in and out, a huge convoy tiding it down off Selsey Bill.

      They